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Pepper Relish

A relish of chopped green tomatoes, onions, and peppers seasoned with salt, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pepper Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, red peppers, and green peppers together.

  2. Mix in the coarse sea salt and drain very dry.

Cook

  1. Put the mixture in a kettle with black pepper, allspice, cloves, mustard seed, celery seed, and vinegar.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and its tart, fresh base flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften during cooking.
Red peppers
Add sweetness, color, and some heat from the seeds left in.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables so the relish is drier and less watery.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the relish.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Drain the salted mixture very dry. Salt pulls water out of the vegetables. If they stay wet, the relish cooks watery and the vinegar dilutes, so draining well keeps the texture thick and the flavor concentrated.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, allspice, clove, mustard, celery, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, allspice, clove, mustard, celery, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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